Pages

Friday, July 12, 2013

I want you to sit down, I want you to sit right across from me and look me in the eyes, I want you to try and see the damage you placed within me as I ask you with the biggest fear in my voice: "How could you do this to me? What pleasure did you get out of it? What gave you the urge? How did you plan the events that unfolded into my life that evening? Did you think that I would go home and carry on with my normal daily activities? Did you not think that for one minute, at least, that I would report your ass?"

I want to find this out, not to hate you more, but to get an understanding on what drives people, men, to hurt us like this, so maybe one day I can offer this understanding to another girl, another woman, maybe even my sister. Maybe I can teach them how to forgive.

I thought I could never forgive you...I could never even try, but once a person moves from being a victim of rape to a survivor of rape, everything just falls into place. The forgiveness just flows into your heart. Please do not take this the wrong way, I will never forgive what you did to me...it was an experience that shaped me into the person I am today, but you are forgiven.

The experience you gave me will remain in my life forever but it is no longer my life's worry. By forgiving you, I have set myself free; I have allowed myself to walk with my head held high and say I am the survivor I have always wanted to be. I have lived almost 8 years of not forgiving you and it wore me down, I became angry, sick and deluded because in some way you still had a hold on me. You still made me panic in public, you were still making me cry and giving me nightmares, but that is because in my heart the unforgivingness of my system was allowing you to do this. Yes, it took me years...but I have forgiven you, the feeling you have given me now, the feeling of freedom and love for life is totally unexplainable.

I wish I had had the guts to have let you go sooner. By not forgiving you, by holding onto the anger you placed into my heart, you made me sick, you made me a person that the people closest to me no longer wanted to be a part of anymore. I tried so many things to try and ease the pain, I tried changing the person I was in life so in a sense it wasn't me who was raped, it was a stranger, another story, another horrible detail in life. You made me feel less than a piece of dirt, an easy piece of meat. You made me vulnerable, you made me scared.

You pushed the innocence away from my life and made me feel guilty for not fighting you off harder, for feeling stupid, for what I had become. I now know that I fought my hardest that night, I was tired and exhausted once you eventaully decided to get your body off mine. I used to wonder how many girls were before me...how many other lives did you damage.

You were just 17 at the time, the same age as myself. I am trying to believe that I was your last, I am hoping I was...I am praying that by me standing up and saying something, I stopped you from turning an innocent girl into what you turned me into...just another statistic.

When I saw you after you had "changed" me, I shook with anger, I trembled with fear. I couldn't stand seeing you and I avoided it at all costs. If I ad to see you in the streets today, if I had to look up and catch your face, your hard frame of a body, then I will casually walk right past you as if you were just another stranger to my life...another number to the world. When working through you and your sin that you placed onto my life, I realized that you probably never even cared if I hated you or wished you were dead. You probably never lay awake at night wondering if you are forgiven or even wonder of I think about it, these thoughts helped, because if you are not phased by it, then why should I be? Why should I allow you to take away valuable life experiences I could be having if it wasn't for you? Why should I allow you to fill my eyes with tears while you are probably laughing at a joke that was just told?

I decided that you are not dwelling on this situation, so why should I allow it to eat me up inside...piece by piece? By not forgiving you, I felt I am in my own way building myself up, allowing this not to happen again, but everything happens for a reason and if it is meant to happen it will no matter how much hate and anger you or myself have placed in to my heart.

I when you hear these words, you will smile and say...you see...we can be forgiven...but please do not feel flattered, the forgiveness is not for you, it is for me...for my well-being...for my life's journey from this day forward. I have now accepted that I cannot change the past but I can control my future with the choices I make today, and that is why...my friend...while you are sitting across from me, after I hear what I have wanted to know for all these years, I will stand up, and with pride, shake your hand and say..."YOU ARE FORGIVEN!"

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

I hope you are fine. And, even though I am the one who have decided not to see your face ever again and haven't even talked to you on the phone since the last time which was more than a year from now, I still want you to know that I miss you. I wish you were here, despite the fact that I'll never allow that to happen.

I am glad that the last time when I left your house even though I was in tears, I managed to smile and tell you, "its okay". But, I am also gravely sad, because you failed to understand I was lying. Right there, I knew I will never return. Actually, may be you did realize it too that I was leaving forever and yet had let me go. Nevertheless, the dilemma remains- I miss you.

And, yes, at the beginning I said 'friend' because even though you were and still are so much more than that to me, it's just I have yet not found the perfect word to describe you. Well, sure, we were friends, but you were different. In fact, now that I think and look back, I see you were always more than a friend

to me. You were that person to whom I for the first time in my life I learned to calm down, rather than my Mom and Dad. Like my other friends I did never go crazy with you, but beside you I sat...and learned the world. I sat beside you and felt absolutely weightless. I sat beside you and dreamt endless. True, I was always a mess, but with you beside me I freely scattered, because I had you to gather me preciously and take home.

With you, I grooved…I was fearless more than ever. You were the person I believed who will remain.

Back there, I was clumsy, spoiled, loud and brave, but yet you held my hand. You hugged me even though you knew I was too scared to hug back. Just like my Mom. You saw right through me, the real me. The person who has been loved way to much from her childhood, whose family and parents had loved her in such a way and granted her such freedom that sure she became the confident, stubborn, brave kid who was never afraid to fight and question the authorities, but inside very secretly who also was scared; very frightened that one day her family will not remain and the great love all in her surround will be vanished.

Yes, I was scared that the people I love will be gone from this world one day and I will not be able to endure the pain. The fear made me tentative, messed up and emotional. I tried desperate to find things that will remain and last forever. Well, I heard true friendship lasts forever. Strangely, I was scared to be alone, yet I was scared to hold people near, thinking that one day I will have to let them go. I was being unbelievable, childish and

illogical. My mum hugged me everyday, my family kept telling "love you", but I never did anything to return any of those affections, because I was too scared. I tried appearing unemotional, told myself I am too tough to care. And those feelings were affecting me even in terms of my relationships with my friends. However, I never admitted my fear back then, though I hated lies more than anything.

But still you managed see the true me, how I was being friends with people with whom I had almost nothing in common. How I was troublesome yet very emotional, seeking something true. I was so messed that I didn't even trust you in the beginning, then something happened however, you gained my trust…and that was it. I

was with you 24/7, after the classes we used to sit for hours and talk about what I couldn't even track. Well, mostly I talked and you just listened though. Its funny how you used to say in your gloomy world I was the only thing to make your day and you will be there to hold me always…

So, I miss you, I miss you smiling on my stupid deeds. I miss you trying to be tough yet giving it away to me. I miss you scolding me for whining too much, then again getting pissed because I had stopped whining according to your words. I really miss you holding me, keeping me together. I miss having lunches with you. I, too, really miss lying on your bed and you scratching my hair. I even miss crying sitting in front of you. And, yes, I miss you kissing me.

Its just....I loved you. You were my friend, my shelter, and someone whom I once deeply loved and respecte, but now hate. It is impossible for me to continue to love you. But you are too important to be not present in one of my most passionate feelings. And, sadly, rather than 'hate' , I know no other passionate and gallant feeling that can dare compete to 'love' ; the most profound of all feelings.

For some reason I wish that I had never told you. All of the signs that I shouldn't tell you were there, but I didn't listen. I feel like a heel, and am afraid that I have ruined not only our friendship but whatever possibility of a relationship there might have been. I feel confident in saying that even had things turned out differently we would have never been together, but the always annoying and hateful "IF" is staring, ready to slap you in the face.

I want to believe the things you said, but it just screams of being let down easy, it screams of "I don't have these feelings for him, but I don't want to hurt him", and here I am content to wait and find out if you were telling the truth. A year is a long time to wait on something that might never happen, but the lesson in patience will do me good. All I want is your happiness, all I want is to find myself in a relationship that would be pleasing before God. I am a fool for this, however; other twenty year old guys don't think like I do. Am I to be alone forever, or will my willingness to wait you out pay off in the end?

Someone asked me what I was going to do in regards to our situation; I told them that I had decided to trust you, but in reality I think I'm just waiting to call your bluff. Is that spiteful of me? I say that all I want is your happiness and yet this is how I feel about the whole situation; that I am calling your bluff?

A long time ago I had a conversation with someone about relationships; I told them how I felt that I would never get married, how I didn't think it was "in the cards" for me, and yet here I am thinking about you.

Are you my shot? If I've blown this opportunity have I blown my shot? Does God only give us one shot at these things? I don't know the answer to that; I doubt that anyone does, really.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Thank you for what you did for me, whether or not you even knew what that was. I barely knew you, and yet you died for me. You didn't even die to save my life, you died so that I could have a single moment. The moment I'd dreamed of. The dream that I'd wished for so hard that I'd called it a prophecy, long before I knew, that's exactly what it was.

Thank you for all the people who may never know how your life and death affected their lives. Yes, I know that you died for a cause bigger than me and my 'prophecy'. I'm not so self-centered that I would think that a single moment of my life was worth yours. My entire life would not have been worth yours. I don't pretend to know why you died, or all that you accomplished, but I only know that there must be more to what happened than what I can see. I'm still trying to figure out what I can, but I'm only a voice crying out in the dark. You were the light, and you're gone now. I have to solve this great enigma on my own.

And I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I needed your miracle as much as I did. I'm sorry that I was so focused on my dreams that I didn't see the bigger picture. I couldn't see that you would have to die to make my dreams come true. And yet, it's hard not to blame myself. As though my wishing for what happened was what killed you. Maybe it was. I wish I knew. But there's so much I wish I knew. And I know that if I knew the whole story, I might wish I didn't. But still, I can't help but wonder.

Sometimes I've wondered if you really knew what you were doing. And I've wondered whether it was worth it. Often I've wondered how it is that the past could predict the future. Was it fate? Did you know? Did I simply wish so hard that my dream became reality?

I still don't really know whether to feel guilty or grateful to you. Maybe you knew nothing of my silly prophecy, and we were both just pawns of some greater power. Maybe wishing hard enough for something really can make it come true. I hope not. But I don't know.

I've tried to blame it on chance, or luck, or coincidence. But the chances were too high against what happened. It was billions to one. That wasn't coincidence.

Was it my fault? That is the question I cannot stop asking myself. I wish you could answer me. Perhaps that would finally ease the guilty conscience I've been carrying for these past two years.

But another question has entered my thoughts more recently. Does it really matter? Does it matter whether it was my fault or not? All that matters is what happened. And whether I would have done it all again. Would I have done it all again? That's the question that really scares me. Because I don't know the answer to that, either. Would I have let you die if I could have stopped it? I want to scream yes, yes, a million times yes, but there is always that dark doubt in the back of my mind. The dark, dreaming part of my mind that wonders if maybe it really was worth it. A single moment of perfection, worth a human life? I want to say no, it wasn't. A human life is worth so much more than that. But that dark doubt won't let me go. What can I do?

And I know you must not wish for me to feel guilty forever. I'm trying to forgive myself. But it's hard, and I'm afraid, because I still don't know if you would have forgiven me. I still don't even know if you meant for things to happen the way they did. Perhaps that's a stupid thing to wonder. You were never one to withhold forgiveness, anyway. But, there's still that dark doubt . . .

Was it my fault? It all comes back to that question. I wish you could answer me.

I guess, most of all, I just want to say thank you. If only because 'thank you' is all I have left to say. A long time ago, you sent me a birthday card. I don't know if it meant anything to either of us at the time, but it means everything to me now.

Make a very special wish

Let your spirits soar

Celebrate with all your heart

That's what a birthday's for

Thank you for that very special wish. I will celebrate it with all my heart, forever.

It's just not the case anymore to say i still love you, i miss you or even i need you. It's been years now and naturally i think of you, of us. The laughter and the very few battles, i wonder where are you now and if i contact you? will you respond, but, i don't want to contact you. Not anymore. I want to feel the same about you then and there, a place in which i was so infatuated and fascinated about you. One look made me shiver, i miss that emotion now that power you had over me and that i was willing to give you for i was in love and i know you were too. But now as i am older and perhaps wiser i know now that i don't love you as I've moved on and so have you, but i miss the time that i did and the place we were. We'll never have that again, and those times, places, tears and joys are fading. Which makes me sad but we are alive and are not static beings held to the past. So when i am back walking the Sydney streets that you and i used to roam about, i will think of you and of us and a time and a place.